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AMD Catalyst 9.4 Finally Brings X Server 1.6 Support

04-17-2009, 01:00 PM

Phoronix: AMD Catalyst 9.4 Finally Brings X Server 1.6 Support

X Server 1.6 was released back in February, and there have been test releases for it going back to the end of last year, but today AMD has finally delivered support for this new X.Org server in their proprietary Linux graphics driver. Like last month with the Catalyst 9.3 release, the Linux version was not released on the same day as the Windows build, which ended up being a one-week delay. Besides X Server 1.6 support there are also a few other changes in Catalyst 9.4 worth reporting.

Comment

Well in 9.4 they've dropped support for r300-r500 and haven't added any spectacular feature like every month (beside xserver 1.6 support) and the size of the binary file is even bigger than before. How is this possible? Does dropping support for r300-r500 meant only setting flag from 1 to 0 for these chips?

Comment

Have the drivers literally stopped working with R300-R500, or are they just not developing any further for these chips? Either way, it sounds like they left the code in for said cards -- that, or what they needed to add for xserver 1.6 support somehow required more resources.

Comment

Can this legacy code (r1xx-r5xx) be activated in this driver? could any amd engineer shed some light on this? i prefer to mess with an unstable/unsuported driver just for fun, that no driver at all although i'm quitte happy with the open source radeon one

Comment

I think the 3xx-5xx code will get removed as time permits, so most of it is probably still in the driver today -- but since pre-6xx support is not being regression-tested and fixed as we make changes for 6xx and newer parts you should probably assume that pre-6xx support has already stopped working.

Comment

I think the 3xx-5xx code will get removed as time permits, so most of it is probably still in the driver today -- but since pre-6xx support is not being regression-tested and fixed as we make changes for 6xx and newer parts you should probably assume that pre-6xx support has already stopped working.

Thanks for the answer bridgman, i can understand that, but is there any reg i can change so the new driver would allow me to load it, a force load of some kind?